Followup on Independent Seasteads or You Want to Start a Micronation

If one is a libertarian inclined billionaire (like Peter Thiel) or a larger group of people who want to have a city where you want to have more freedom is it better to start a seastead city or become mayor of a libertarian inclined city and make it more libertarian.

Paul Romer (via A Thousand Nations) describes a system of "Charter Cities" distributed about the third world, modeled after Hong Kong and Singapore. These chartered city-states would be "in the third world but not of the third world." In other words, the rule of law and economic dynamism in these city-states would provide an environment of living and choice distinctly different from the squalid and corrupt living conditions currently prominent across the third world.

China has the model of special economic zones for giving special rules for cities to promote economic growth.

Could a billionaire like Thiel follow the example of Michael Bloomberg and buy city elections to become mayor of city and in a state with libertarian tendencies and shift policies towards greater libertarianism ? Would any place in the USA be the place to do it ? What would be the best place in the developed world ?

Places in Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming or Texas come to mind. Where elsewhere in the World? Would the tax haven countries be a start ?

Or is it necessary to setup a smallish cityof 100,000-200,000 people on an island or seastead ? It seems that 500,000 people should be enough based on the Brunei model.

br>It seems pretty clear historically that you cannot be lazy or unwilling to fight in order to sustain a nation.Eventually someone comes around who wants to take over.Israel has mandatory military service.Outsourcing the defence ends up failing sooner or later. ie .England handing some island over to Australia

Would technology enable minimization of the work needed to defend a libertarian micronation ?UAVs and other automated systems.The less effort and resources that get put into the defense and it ends up being a problem later.

Just like a successful startup company a startup nation needs to have a means to scale up to critical size and havea sustainable business model to maintain revenue and cashflow. A British Virgin Islands like purpose in the overall economic system